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Indiana Authors and their books, 1816-1980.
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page: 90[View Page: 90]

DREISER, THEODORE: 1871-1945.

Theodore Dreiser , a controversial literary figure in American letters, was born in Terre Haute, Ind., on Aug. 27, 1871.

His parents were John Paul and Sarah Schanab Dreiser. The father was the object of Theodore Dreiser's extreme dislike; for his mother he held an admiration amounting to worship. His book, d Hoosier Holiday, says: "He [the senior Dreiser] was a crank, a tenth rate Saint Simon of Assisi … He worked, ate, played, slept and dreamed religion."–And of his mother: "I certainly had one of the most perfect mothers ever a man had … an open, uneducated, wondering, dreamy mind, none of the customary, conscious principles with which so many conventional souls are afflicted. A happy, hopeful, animal mother … A pagan mother … A great poet mother … A great hearted mother …"

Throughout his autobiographical writing, long passages of which are introspective, Dreiser refers constantly to the poverty of his family and appears to boast of the difficulties in which its members became involved. There are mentioned in d Hoosier Holiday, besides the father and mother: sisters, several of whom "ran away and (in seemingly, only in so far as the beliefs of my father were concerned) went to the bad. They did not go to the bad actually … although I might disagree with many as to what is bad …"; a brother, Paul (Dresser, author and composer of "On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away") who "got into jail"; a brother who "finally died of drunkenness," his brother Rome, who followed the famih" on one of its many moves to a new town only "to get drunk and disgrace us"; a ne'er-do-well uncle and his wife who had four children, "one of whom, the eldest, became a thief (but a very clever one, I have heard); the second a railroad brakeman; the third the wife of an idle country loafer … the fourth, a hunchbacked boy, was to me, at least, a veritable sprite of iniquity …"; and "a half uncle … a stingy, greedy, well meaning Baptist …"

In addition to these relatives, Dreiser reports most of the friends and acquaintances of his youth as eventually becoming bar-flies, odd-job men, women of ill repute (or wives of lawyers, doctors or tradesmen–a status which he regarded as less fortunate than that preceding), as having been imprisoned, killed by accidental violence, or, in the happier cases, as having disappeared leaving no trace.

The bare facts of the Dreiser family's history, shorn of his colorful trimming, seem to be these:

The father had owned a woolen mill in Sullivan, Ind. Fire had destroyed it, and its loss had taken his home and whatever other assets he may have held. The family (there would eventually be ten children) then removed to Terre Haute , where Dreiser senior became either foreman or superintendent of another woolen mill. There Theodore was born.

By the time Theodore was seven some of the older children were working (Paul had become a minstrel show man and had changed his name to the supposedly more appropriate "Dresser"), but hard t!mes, or perhaps the difficulties to peace inherent in the life of a strict Catholic father and a "pagan… animal mother," caused Mrs. Dreiser to take the younger children back to the town of Sullivan.

At Sullivan the monetary situation grew so difficult page: 91[View Page 91] that after two years Paul Dresser–always to be patronized by the younger, more intellectual Theodore–brought his mother and her children to Evansville, where he supported the brood for two years.

After this period the family moved to Warsaw, Ind., where John Dreiser had apparently found employment. Theodore certainly attended a parochial school in Evansville, probably some sort of school in Sullivan, and possibly in Terre Haute. Now he entered the public school at Warsaw and continued there through high school. After working in Chicago for a time, he was enrolled at Indiana University, where he remained through his eighteenth year.

In 1891 he began newspaper work on the CHICAGO GLOBE, going to St. Louis the next year, where he was employed until 1894. In 1895 he became editor of the magazine EVERY MONTH, leaving after a year to do various assignments for HARPER'S, McCLURE'S, CENTURY, COSMOPOLITAN and MUNSEY'S magazines until 1905-06, when he edited SMITH'S MAGAZINE. In 1906-07 he edited BROADWAY MAGAZINE and from 1907 to 1910 served as editor-in-chief of the Butterick Publications (DELINEATOR, DESIGNER, NEW IDEA, etc.). Later he became editor of the AMERICAN SPECTATOR, continuing until January, 1934.

Dreiser was twice married–his first wife, Sarah Osborne White Dreiser, died in 1942, and his second wife, Helen, survived him.

The first of his novels, Sister Carrie, appeared in 1900, when he was experienced as a periodical contributor and editor but was by no means well known. The book was startlingly frank in its treatment of delicate subject matter, and Dreiser's publishers withdrew it almost immediately, but the notoriety it acquired by its suppression was sufficient to gain a recognition of sorts for its author. Other fairly successful books followed, and in 1916 Dreiser produced The Genius, which enjoyed the benefits of being banned in several cities with resulting publicity. His next books sold widely, and, after a suitable period, another sensational and frequently banned novel, An American Tragedy, added a stimulant to his fame, which lasted to within a few years of his death on Dec. 28, 1945.

A half century or so–during which the sensationalism which marked his best known novels will have had time to mellow–should give some clear decision as to Theodore Dreiser's contribution to Twentieth century literature. During his life he was, to transplanted Hoosier critic George Jean Nathan, "the most important American author"; to many a reader of sound but less exotic taste he was only a gloomy and dirty-minded man whose prose was tortuous. To Llewelyn Powys, he was possessed of "great lumbering imagination, full of divine curiosity … I never fail to feel awe at the struggles of this ungainly giant, whose limbs are still half buried in clay." H. L. Mencken said of him, "He reached heights of unintelligence as great as any of the heights of intelligence that Aristotle achieved." To many a Midwesterner he seemed to be only a writer who could find a rotten spot in every apple. Jacob Piatt Dunn, ardent Hoosier, was admittedly irritated by Dreiser's rumbling philosophical wanderings and cavalier treatment of his Indiana friends and relatives in A Hoosier Holiday. Putting the common plaint in words, Dunn wrote: "He was afflicted with the Marie Bashkirtseff idea that it is fine to bare your soul to the world, unconscious of the fact that the average soul is more presentable in a fig-leaf–much more so in pajamas."

Information from Who's Who in America; Dunn–Indiana and Indianans; Dreiser–A Hoosier Holiday; Dictionary of American Biography; Living Authors; etc., etc.

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